LA MoCA’s Room of Rothkos
LA MoCA’s Room of Rothkos
By: Timothy LeBlanc
At the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) in Los Angeles, there is a room in their permanent collection galleries dedicated to the works of one man, Mark Rothko (1903-1970). He is a polarizing artist that people tend to either love or hate. He’s a large figure of the Abstract Expressionist and in the first group of artists to be identified with the movement. His works are normally large paintings that utilize only a few colors to render visual emotion, driving some viewers to cry as they stand before them. In an interview, published in the great book Conversations with Artists (1961), he even went so far as to once say, “… the people who weep before my paintings are having the same religious experience I had when painting them.” Now, not every work Rothko made brings every person to tears but for many, there is at least one or two that may stir a feeling. Those who do not feel the connection simply have not found “their” Rothko yet. I love thinking of it this way as I am moved by his art and bring all those who I can, around to shows until they find one for them.
Many of his most lauded paintings belong in two large series he has done: the Seagram paintings, some of which are now in the Tate collection in London, and those of the Rothko Chapel in Huston, Texas. Both of these series evoke very dark and strong feelings for many people. In large part, I think this is a function of how they are hung which primes individuals for these strong feelings. Both of these sets are displayed in rooms that surround you in ways that most art does not generally have the space to accomplish. Being in a space where the paintings completely consume allows us, as viewers, to experience the art works more fully. Rothko wanted all of his paintings to be viewed from eighteen inches, at the max. As the market price for his works has gone up and visitor behavior has led to bad experiences, museums have become more stringent on not allowing people to ever get that close. Luckily, many of his very large paintings can block out everything else as we see it from afar and approach until our field of sight is full of nothing but the wash of colors.
At the time of this writing, in the one room in the permeant collection show at MoCA, 7 paintings out of the 11 Rothkos in the museum’s collection, are available for people to come and engage with them. Unlike in the London or Huston exhibits, these works do not come from one specific commissioned series but instead range from his Multiforms of the late 1940s to works of the 1950s (MoCA’s collection also holds one made in 1970; the same year that Rothko would commit suicide; it should be noted that while MoCA’s collection does have a gap from 1961-69, his style had fully matured in the early 1950s and stayed quite similar till his death). In my opinion, this represents the best public collection of Rothko’s work on the west coast of the United States.
In that room, one can allow themselves to just spin and decide which painting calls out to them. One that many people are drawn to is a medium-sized work from 1959, No. 301 (Reds and Violet over Red). It was made the year after his completion of the infamous Seagram series and, while it lacks the dark blacks that series has, No. 301 carries with it a similarly unsettling feeling. The violet that sits in the middle of the canvas almost floats separately from the red blocks, an action achieved by thin sections at the top and bottom that are lightened right where the blocks would meet; this slight isolation brings with it a bit uneasiness.
To the left of that work is No. 61 (Rust and Blue). A monumental painting nearly ten feet tall and eight feet wide, which Rothko completed in 1953. It was the first Rothko to enter MoCA’s collection and is well deserving of any and all accolades it is given. Personally, it is one of the strongest works I have ever seen of his and would be worth a trip to the museum even if it was the only example of his work there. Although we cannot get as close as the 18 inches Rothko would like, get as close as allowed (look for the marks on the floor) and it will fit the entirety of your field of vision.
Simplifying the colors of this work into just rust and blue is misleading. There are three blues of varying values and the rust really reads more as a purple than brown. Along the sides and bottom of the canvas, dark blue gives the whole of the picture a base depth. Upon this foundation, its complexities start. The bottom holds a grey-blue that looks dirty and, while it clearly sits above the framing color, where it meets the center stripe it intertwines without mixing. This center blue, by far the lightest, jumps out of the canvas at the viewer. It is clean and the most plainly rendered, lacking some but not all of the brushstrokes we get sucked into. Above these sit the “rust.” This rust is amazing. As said, it reads more as a purple than brown but not the pretty purple of a fresh flower or the deep ones so long associated with royalty. This purple and Rothko’s handling of it brings it squarely into the layered texture of the purple of a bruise. His brushstrokes loosen and tighten as he moves across the canvas. Near the center stripe, it is so packed that it is almost black and as you move up it lightens just enough that the viewer feels echoes of memory of the hurt from deep bruising. He takes this color all the way up to the edge of the canvas. I have gotten lost in this painting, trying to figure out what paint came first and which last and how it makes me feel… hurt or sad but, in the end, the sense of knowing with any pain there is an edge for which it can be defined.
Hopefully one of the Rothkos in the room is for you but, if not, keep looking because one or maybe more will be.
“I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions – tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on – and the fact that lots of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I communicate those basic human emotions…”
- Mark Rothko